


La Petite Mort (x2 Combo)

by PerfidiousFate



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Game Over Timeline, Guilt, POV Second Person, Retcon Timeline, Semi-Ambiguous POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-22 11:58:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9606677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfidiousFate/pseuds/PerfidiousFate
Summary: Pre-retcon, Terezi kills Vriska. Post-retcon, she doesn't.If only it were that simple.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this work! "Solemn and serious and spiky" is one of my favorite relationship dynamics for these two -hopefully, I did the prompt JUST1C3.

There are two Terezis.

One who killed Vriska, and one who didn’t.

(You flip a coin. Scratch or no scratch. Goofy kid in blue pajamas punching the lights out of Vriska, or no goofy kid, and just her body hitting the ground in front of you.

Which Terezi are you?)

* * *

You are the Terezi who stabbed Vriska in the back, and your fingers itch with it.

It’s funny, because Vriska is the one who calmed that buzzing in your head down, whenever you killed people. You met before either of you were murderers, when you were just bored and lonely kids online. You’ve always loved justice, but Vriska is the one who tells you about Redglare. You want to be her so badly it aches. She’s so cool and smart and self-assured, not like you at all.

But then you murder Vriska. And her blood stains your hands, and she’s not even there to laugh at you for forgetting to wash it off.

Karkat tells you it’s not _really_ your fault. Paradox space deemed it so; you are part of the alpha timeline, ergo you were always going to kill her. You didn’t have a choice: the Terezi who didn’t kill Vriska is withering away in a doomed timeline somewhere. It's just luck of the draw that you're the alpha Terezi. It’s very Karkat of him. But in a court of law, there’s no use going up and pleading that in 99% of alternate timelines, you’re innocent. You would be legislacerated immediately for your sheer audacity. Intent doesn’t matter; some nebulous concept of ‘self’ doesn’t matter; what matters is what you did and what you didn’t do and what you know. Actions. Intent.  JUST1C3.

And if there’s one thing you believe in, it’s justice.

* * *

You are the Terezi who didn’t kill Vriska.

There are a lot of Terezis that kill Vriska. You meet some (many) in the dream bubbles. They all look hollow and worn in the way you can’t just attribute to being dead. A pile of Terezis who murdered Vriska, and not a whole lot that _didn’t._

“Who cares!” Vriska says in between bites of her popcorn when you share that thought with her. “I’m alive now. That’s what matters, not some dead alt Vriskas rotting away in the dream bubbles.” Her eyes are glued to the screen, and Nic Cage’s face. You sometimes think about being jealous – Vriska blushes whenever she sees Nic Cage, and her smile goes gooey whenever she talks about John Egbert – but you’re too busy being you, raw and so much more of a mess than you let on. Instead, you covertly take a huge whiff and try to burn the scent of Vriska into your nostrils.

The Terezi who did both – the Terezi of your childhood – she used to stare at Vriska too. Vriska’s smiles always had an edge, unless she was with you. You used to savour them. Well. At least until the rainbow blood started flowing, and your hands were stained with it and the growing realization that maybe what you were doing was _wrong_ , and that Vriska didn’t care. That Vriska never cared. That Vriska paralyzed Tavros and killed Aradia and didn’t even see why what she did was fucked up.  

A lot of Terezis killed a lot of Vriskas. Vriska is dangerous, and was dangerous the entire session – some Terezis take her out as soon as she made it in the game. Some Terezis finish off Aradia’s job before she bullies Tavros into taking her to her quest bed. Some manipulate her into a Heroic death against the Black King. Some poison, some stab, some manipulate. All of them smell like horror.

You still don’t think that what someone else does is your responsibility, even if they have your name and your blood and your brain. But you think it’s worth noting – in the entirety of paradox space, not once does Vriska Serket ever kill Terezi Pyrope.

* * *

The Terezi who killed Vriska feels her absence like a gaping wound.

 _Sisters_. On Alternia, you don’t have stupid little human things like ‘family’. But you can call someone who shares your blood and your sign a sibling, because it’d be so easy to confuse the two of you.

Vriska came up with the name Scourge Sisters. “It’ll be great,” she’d said, clutching your hands, wide-eyed and excited and with red paint on her cheek, “We’ll be the absolute greatest! Two badass girls taking down anybody who gets in their way. They’ll hardly be able to tell us apart. It’s gonna be soooooooo awesome!”

You’d frowned. “You mean just bad guys, right?” You get the sense of something wrong, but you love Vriska so, so much already that you quash it down. You were so _stupid_.

She’d rolled her eyes. “Of course!” she said, and grinned her confident grin. “I know what my sister’s all about. We’ll scourge the world with _justice!_ And feed Mom at the same time. Just because it’s convenient, you know.”

(Of course, she was lying. She lied and lied and lied to you.)

The Terezi who killed Vriska thinks about that a lot. _Sisters_. You see Vriska whenever you close your eyes. And you’re blind. So you distract yourself with Can Town and humans and dream bubbles – but that just makes it worse. Can Town isn’t real, the humans are falling apart, and you see a thousand Vriskas whenever you dream, but none of them are yours.

You’d killed a lot of people. Innocent ones, too. You remember Dave’s blood seeping out on his quest bed, and a rainbow of FLARPers. But the sound your sword made as it went into Vriska’s spine, the way she exhaled and made this tiny noise – that haunts your dreams. (A God can only die a death Heroic or Just. A coin flip. But you don’t believe in luck, do you? So she dies, and you don’t even get the satisfaction of knowing which one of you was right.)

The Terezi who didn’t kill Vriska thinks about it a lot, too. But you don’t know the noise Vriska makes as she dies, or the way the tiniest fleck of blood bubbled up at the corner of her mouth, or the graceless thunk her corpse made as it hit the ground.

In your imagination, it’s almost worse.

This version of you hadn’t killed her, because of John coming out from nowhere and knocking her out. But you would have. The knowledge burns you. Vriska’s forgiven you, she’s forgiven you a thousand times over – where you still haven’t forgiven her for killing Aradia, not _really_ – but it’s so hard to squabble over cake with her or watch movies or tease Rose and Kanaya with the knowledge of what you’re capable of hanging over you.

“I almost killed you,” you confess to her half a sweep into the journey, and the words are just as thick on your tongue as in your mind. You’re in your room. Vriska had been telling a long, exaggerated story, replete with hand gestures and even a few visual aids. You’d blurted out your confession in the brief pause after she finished one story and before she starts the next one.

She rolls her eyes, exaggerated. “Are you still on about that?” she demands, throwing herself down in the pile of scalemates with a huff. “I toooooooold you, it’s fiiiiiiiine. You didn’t actually do it, and I was being a huge bitch anyway. You should just get over it already.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes back. All things considered, Vriska is smart – scarily smart, even, she’s sharp as a sword that stabs her through the spine and shreds her sinews as it comes out through her chest and cobalt blood spews out of her and the Light shining in her eyes fades – but that doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. (It matters, anyway.) What should matter is, Vriska is alive and warm and breathing, and she’s smart but so, so dumb when it comes to other people.

“Vriska, please,” you say. “I can’t just ‘get over it’. You should – ”

“Oh, _hush_ ,” she says, and then she leans over and kisses you. She tastes like raspberry gushers and sour self-assurance, and you kiss her back and think that that’s what her blood would have tasted like.

* * *

Dave tells you about this human thing called ‘la petite mort’. Humans are soft and scrawny, but any species that can equate orgasms with death are badass in your book.

 Dave tells you a lot of things. He’s a broken spout who can’t turn himself off. The Terezi who killed Vriska puts her lips on his and swallows all his secrets. But the Terezi who killed Vriska hurts all over all the time and can’t help soothe his constant ache; and he was too busy dealing with the murder of someone he’d loved, and who twisted him up inside himself, to help you get over the death of someone you’d  loved who’d left fingertip bruises all over your soul. You and him didn’t so much break up as shudder apart. 

But two Daves tell the two Terezis about la petite mort, the little death. One Dave tells you over breakfast, voice filled with sleep as you try and out-stubborn each other into alchemizing a suitable meal. Another Dave tells another you over dinner, because Karkat and Kanaya are having a “secret” meeting about romance and Vriska is off meddling with Rose, and this Dave’s voice is filled with exaggerated innuendo and he accompanies it with a wink. You whack him with your cane.

But you think about it. La petite mort.

You think about it when you kiss Vriska and swallow her gasps with your lips. She’s cool beneath your fingertips, but the way your hands map her body warms her up. She closes her eyes, all eight of them, as you kiss her, and you taste the sun on your tongue. This is nothing like being four and Vriska wanting to practice kissing before she gets a real quadrant, where she sticks her tongue in your mouth immediately and you bite it and she makes stupid faces and you end up pushing her in the recuperacoon and then cackling as she emerges, furious and spluttering, before she relents, throws her hair back, and laughs. And this is nothing like being five and roleplaying out an encounter between Mindfang and Redglare, where she rests her hands around your neck like a noose and you bite her lips bloody and raw, and you laugh when you break apart but it’s awkward and nervous.

This is all heat and explosions, with your heart stuttering out of your chest and your blood singing, and you wonder, you wonder about what noise she would have made as you stabbed her in the back. If it would have been the same as the gasps she lets out now. _La petite mort_.

The Terezi who killed Vriska wonders that, too. What noise Vriska would have made if you dragged your tongue over her neck.  

(When you R3M3MB3R, you hear both.)

* * *

The Terezi who killed Vriska dies.

It’s a clusterfuck. You watch so many people that you love die, and die, and die. You’re the Seer of Mind, but for the first time ever you feel truly blind, because you didn’t see this coming. Nobody could see this coming. Instead, Karkat dies, and Gamzee dies, and Kanaya dies and Dave dies and Rose dies and even those silly human kids you’ve never met die. Everyone is dead. E v e r y o n e.

Except for John and Roxy.

You send them back. You send them back to fix things, and then you die. You remember Vriska’s smile, and for the first time in a long time, you smile too.

In a court of law, you can’t just take back your actions – that’s not how it works, and that’s one of the reasons you love it – but screw it. Screw it. Luck is bullshit and life isn’t a story, but if you’re going to be writing one you demand a better ending.

* * *

The Terezi who didn’t kill Vriska R3M3M83RS.

(la petite mort)

* * *

The Vriska who was killed by Terezi is standing there, and she’s smiling, nervous. She looks younger than you remember. But of course, you’re older than she was when she died. She has braids and piercings and a tattoo, and you’re surprised at how well it suits her.

You are watching the universe shatter, and you’re clutching at each other like you never want to part. She feels cool against your skin, but the way you hold her warms her up.  

She tells you about what she’s been up to. There’s soooooooo much. You can listen to her for eternity.

You think about asking her for forgiveness. You killed her, after all. You tasted her blueberry blood in the air, like licking a gusher. You’d cleaned her insides off your cane.

Instead, you say “Hey, remember when we made that replica of the courtroom? It was so badass. I loved it.”

Vriska lights up. “Yeah! That was awesome, wasn’t it? We should totally track it down in one of the dream bubbles! I don’t mean to brag, but I’m somewhat an expert in navigating them, after all.” She tosses her hair back and smirks.

She doesn’t ask you if you want to go with her. The answer is obvious. You squeeze her hand, and you wonder what noise she’d make if you kissed her right now.

For the first time in what feels like forever, you smile.

* * *

There are two Terezis. The one that killed somebody she loved, somebody that she loved with her whole being and her whole heart and her whole existence, somebody she loved so much the universe shuddered with it, and the one that didn’t.

And there are two sides of a coin. Scratched side and non-scratched side.

And you wonder – which side was the lucky 8rk? Scratch or non-scratched? Murdered or saved? Goofy dork or no goofy dork?

But then…you always thought luck was bullshit anyway.

(The Terezi who R3M3M83RS has heard the noise Vriska makes when she dies, and the noise she makes when you nibble her earlobe. As you strap on your rocketpack, you think that maybe you don't want to just be the Terezi who didn't kill Vriska anymore. Maybe it's time to be the one that saves her.)


End file.
